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After taking over mainstream pop with her record-breaking album 'Brat' last year, the '360' hitmaker has been loosely discussing what’s next with her frequent collaborators, A.G. Cook and Finn Keane (formerly known as Easyfun), and one her ideas was to do something that is “anti-Brat”.
Charli’s lead producer Cook told Grammy.com when asked if they have talked about new material: “Not truly, it's just loose chatting about things. [For Charli] the genesis of things is really about having an idea but then being very impulsive. I think you need a certain amount of space to do that.”
Keane, however, spilled: “Chatting to Charli now, there is a desire in her to do the complete opposite thing again, which is very in keeping with her ethos. Some of the conversations we're having and music we've been playing around with the last couple of months have been completely the opposite. I love that spirit. It's the iconoclastic impulse to rebuild something completely different, to show that you actually could do this other thing, this whole other side of your artistry.”
Keane insisted it might not end up being “anti-Brat”, but he’s feeling “very optimistic and excited” about what’s to come.
He added: “It's been really funny, in the months after finishing the remix album, any other musical discussion that has taken place has been kind of anti-Brat. I doubt that'll stick, but that's been a really interesting thing to observe and makes me very optimistic and excited about [what's next].”
Charli won three Grammy Awards this past weekend, with ‘Brat’ bagging Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Recording Package, while the track ‘Von Dutch’ took Best Dance Pop Recording.
On her remix LP, 'Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat', Charli collaborated with the likes of Lorde, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Bon Iver and Julian Casablancas.
The ‘Boom Clap’ hitmaker recently admitted she never expected ‘Brat’ to be so successful.
She told W magazine: "I wasn’t thinking that it would be very successful at all, despite believing in the music massively. I was making it for myself. To please everybody is sort of pointless."
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Brentford has introduced a special edition shirt created with Hard-Fi to celebrate twenty years since the release of ‘Stars of CCTV’.
The band honoured the twentieth anniversary of the album, which topped the charts in 2005 and earned a Mercury Music Prize nomination, with a deluxe reissue earlier this year. Now, they have partnered with their longtime club, the Bees, on a shirt inspired by the artwork from the record.
Designed by official kit partner Joma, the shirt showcases the Brentford crest along with the striking yellow CCTV style camera graphic featured on the album cover. The design is a nod to Brentford and Hard-Fi’s shared west London heritage. Fans can buy the shirt at the Hive Superstore, and it will be available to purchase online here from 9am on Monday (December 1).
As a dedicated supporter and season ticket holder, frontman Richard Archer has followed the club’s rise to the Premier League and even performed at Brentford’s Farewell Griffin Park event before the team moved to the Gtech Community Stadium.
When speaking about the collaboration, Brentford’s marketing services director Steve Watts said the shirt brings together “two important parts of west London’s identity – football and music.”
“Hard-Fi and Brentford are entwined in each other’s history and have been authentic supporters of each other for the last two decades,” he added. “So it feels fitting to bring the two together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the iconic Stars of CCTV album with this limited edition shirt.”
Archer described the shirt’s release as “right up there” with the most meaningful opportunities the band has ever had. “We are so grateful to Brentford for making this happen,” he said. “It is such a buzz seeing the finished shirt and watching the players wearing it. We feel incredibly proud to work with a club that means so much to us.”
“This is a perfect way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Stars and to look ahead to our new fourth album.”
News of their upcoming music arrived earlier this month when the band revealed that they have completed their first album in fourteen years.
Speaking to NME in 2023, Archer reflected on their debut and said: “‘Stars of CCTV’ seems more relevant now than it did back in 2005, almost. A lot of the subjects are more prescient now perhaps, so, it is just trying to figure out what is it we want to say, and sonically what do we want to be doing? We are trying lots of different things out to see what resonates.”
“When we wrote ‘Stars Of CCTV’, even though the subjects were talking about what was happening, it was not really as on purpose. It was just talking about our lives and when we were growing up, writing about what we knew and trying to make a point about it in some ways. We want to do what feels good and not worry too much, like we did on album one.”
“We just want to enjoy the process and not be pressured into making the new ‘Hard To Beat’.”
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